Tuesday, May 31, 2005

You know I'm fond of lists, for I believe lists are a great way of organizing thought and presenting information.

When you blog, turn idea clusters into lists whenever possible. Use the number of items in your post title, which arouses intrigue, promises specifics, and enhances credibility.

Not "Tips on Email Writing" but "12 Tips for Effective Emails that Generate Response".

With an article like "Lifecycle of Bloggers", you're going to get some who will argue, "that's not what happened in my life" or "maybe this is true for personal blogs, but not business blogs" and junk like that.

Probably just jealous that Min was smart enough and creative enough to come up with the list. A list is organized, hierarchical or process descriptive, thought.

Now let's take a look at Min's list.

I'll begin with the intro paragraph. I've snipped (deleted) some portions as a courtesy to the author, to motivate you to go visit the original article, and read other posts there.

[QUOTE from Min Jung Kim]

Having blogged in one form or fashion for the last 6 years or so (not including personal journals that I’ve written in, on paper even, with crayon even, since I was six years old), allow me to personally provide you with a rundown on the lifecycle that I’ve observed from personal bloggers.

#1. Start reading blogs.

You start out as a lurker...

[snip]

#2. You start a blog.

[snip]

#3. You become a stats whore.

Daily stats/referrals and meme participation for webrings, quizlists, personality profiles, and the occasional sepia toned webcam photo to make you look all “emo” and “sultry” and “sensitive” or at least a little bit thinner.

[snip]

#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.

As you recognize the possibility of being an opinion leader in your personal circle, people flame you. You occasionally flame back. You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You bitch about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds...

[snip]

#5. You faux “retire” from blogging.

[snip]

#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.

[snip]

#7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.

You seek out “The A-List” of bloggers and start reading more of them, and news about them, and news about blogging in general.

[snip]

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.

This will likely end badly. Very badly.

#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.

[snip]

#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.

You become pedantically navelgazingly annoying. For some reason, your blogger readership eats this shit up. This does not convince you, however, that you want to do something silly like smoke weed with Marc Canter. Because even *you* know that’s a bad idea.

#11. See step 5. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

#12.

#13.

#14.

[END QUOTE by Min Jung Kim]

[STREIGHT commentary]:

Curious about what those last three phases in the life of a typical blogger are?

[This is an identical post that is being simultaneously published at my Blog Core Values blog.]

SAY GOODBYE to Blogging...

Blogging is about to be killed.

Bye bye blogging.

It was nice knowing you. (audible sigh)

THE DEATH OF BLOGGING

Here it is, Memorial Day, and in a certain sense, I'm not feeling very patriotic.

(NOTE: Every time I post something controversial, I lose RSS subscribers, lurkers, and casual readers. So be it. I am what I am. Weed out the losers, fine with me. The sooner the better. I speak only to truth-seekers anyway.)

Why do I feel sad? Because United States legislation by the FEC (Federal Election Committee) is poised to destroy free speech blogging.

Free Speech Blogging means you say whatever you want, about anything you want, and link to anything you want...with no fees, no fines, no penalties, no jail time.

This is coming to an end rapidly. I think we all know why, if we pay attention to the devastation to MSM and politicians by bloggers.

THE DANGER TO BLOGGERS: If you just mention a political candidate, or link to their web site or blog, or engage in other loosely defined political activity on your blog, the FEC is getting ready to consider that blogging act a FINANCIAL DONATION. Sound crazy? Wake up. They're serious. Investigations, fines, etc. are headed our way. Soon.

Some may consider me extreme, paranoid, alarmist, or rash. But watch what's happening in the blogosphere and in the news media. Doom is on it's way, unless we fight back fast and hard.

This is our time to shine and to preserve Free Speech Blogging for coming generations as well as ourselves.

Even if you could care less about politics and politicians (I'm with you there), this attack is just the beginning of the end.

If we sit around and do nothing, like most people, we'll lose our rights to blog freely, independently, opinionatedly...about anything.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

In a recent post, we examined together the post titles of selected blogs.

This time around, let's take a look at blog "taglines" or "descriptions".

Taglines are like slogans. You generally find taglines right under the title of the blog. Or some other prominent, upper region on the blog's main (index) page.

Sometimes it's not easy to determine what a blog's about just by the title. A tagline is usually used by the blogger to clarify the purpose or content of a blog.

Taglines can vary from a few words...to a lengthy paragraph or two.

SUGGESTION: I strongly urge every blogger to use a tagline on your blog. It can give your blog that little extra edge of clarification or intrigue that could prevent a first-time reader from leaving your site, due to not seeing any personal relevance.

Now...let the experiment begin.

Decide if the following taglines are accurate and compelling, i.e., cause you to want to go visit the corresponding blogs for which they act as sub-titles.

"The generalist synthesist weblog - quite often about innovations in innovation and marketing. Juxtaposing the right brain and left. Yin and yang. Analytical and intuitive. Technical and visceral. Future and in-the-now. Intersection of technology, creativity, innovation, leadership, systems, beliefs, and worldviews. Eventually, on-the-road coverage from a world journey to the emerging creative class centers of the world."

"Scott Ginsberg is an internationally recognized author, professional speaker, and 'that guy who always wears the nametag.' In this blog, Scott shares techniques, stories, and observations from his speeches, articles and books on how to become an UNFORGETTABLE communicator - one conversation at a time."

Thus blogged former King Norodom Sihanouk to a critic of his support of gay marriage.

He didn't share any of the insulting e-mails with his readers, but noted: "My country, Cambodia, has chosen to be a liberal democracy since 1993. Every Cambodian ... including the King has the right to express freely their view."

It was one of thousands of commentaries that fill the Web site of the world's most colorful and pugnacious royal blogger, offering Sihanouk's views on anything from environmental rape through Hollywood stars and killer spouses to the rough-and-tumble of Cambodian politics.

Sihanouk has been a giant on the Asian political scene for 50 years. He took on the French empire to win Cambodia's independence. During the Vietnam War he was such a nuisance to Washington that he was ousted in a U.S.-supported coup. He backed the Khmer Rouge until its murderous regime turned on him and put him under house arrest.

Today at 82, he is Cambodia's lion in winter, cancer-stricken and undergoing treatment in China, his former place of exile where he still has a home. Yet he's as sharp-tongued and loquacious as ever. The man who grew up on cowboy movies has taken to the World Wide Web with equal gusto.

For at least three years he has been posting his opinions, historical documents and exchanges with diplomats or Cambodian politicians. He abdicated in favor of his son Sihamoni last fall, and is in and out of the hospital, but the Internet keeps him in the public eye in a style that may be unique on the world stage.

[snip]

Sihanouk's site doesn't have all the technical bells and whistles that fit the purist definition of a Web log.

But that caveat aside, says David L. Sifry, whose company Technorati tracks blogs, Sihanouk is making "incredibly innovative use of the Internet to be able to communicate directly with the people of Cambodia and the people of the world."

[snip]

The postings aren't all so benign. He has angered Prime Minister Hun Sen with caustic critiques of Cambodian society and politics penned by one Ruom Ritt, a supposed childhood pen pal.

[snip]

Sihanouk often lets fly with his own views on Cambodia's social ills -- illegal logging that threatens to turn the country into a "tiny Sahara without oil," the trafficking of Cambodian women for prostitution in other Asian countries where they "suffer, are humiliated," their impoverished parents helpless to intervene.

[snip]

He recently blogged that his cancer has re-emerged from remission, but upon learning that a magazine was preparing his obituary, he told his readers: "Even today, Friday the 13th, I am not yet aware of my death. Maybe I am already dead. But I will continue to believe that I am alive.

Sihanouk's Web site, part English but mostly French: www.norodomsihanouk.info

[END QUOTE]

So, what do YOU think?

Is this a blog?

Is this interesting to see--royalty speaking candidly to the public?

Don't business people and CEOs seem kind of ignorant when they still wonder "why blog?" and "what would I do with a blog?"

Here are Cambodian royals blogging away, opening their hearts, displaying medical records, telling us what they think about a variety of issues!

There is a post entitled "Results of Laboratory Examination of His Majesty Norodom Sihanouk" that contains information on everything from his serum immunoglobulins and blood urea nitrogen to his cancer antigens 199 and 125 and his urobilinogen levels.

I suppose he's trying to prove that he's still alive.

LOL

:^)

I applaud them for putting themselves out there on the internet, for all to see.

One of the controversies raging in the blogosphere, according to my research and observation, is Comments vs. Linking.

Does a blog really need to have comments from readers?

I have to control myself now.

I don't want to anger any pioneering bloggers or my very astute blog colleagues.

But I think it's...how shall I put this?...absurd to even pose this question.

NON-INTERACTIVE BLOGS = BROADCAST PULPITS

What makes a blog so much better, in most cases, than a conventional web site?

A blog is interactive with its audience.

A blog enables readers to join the conversation, rather than shut up and listen passively.

There are some wonderful, smart, pioneer blogs out there that do not allow comments from readers.

Why?

Too many stupid comments? Too much comment spam? I don't know what legitimate reasons could exist to turn off comments.

A blog that merely contains statements by the blogger, with no comments by the readers: this is just a one-way broadcast pulpit.

I always feel like the Non-comment Blog is telling me to just listen and learn. No questions. No interruptions. No two-way conversation allowed. Weird. Aloof. Unfriendly. Cold. Alienating...in most cases.

MY VICTORY OVER COMMENT SPAMMERS

I turned off comments for about two months on all my blogs, except Blog Core Values.

Because I just discovered a neat weapon against them, a free tool from Blogger, combined with my Gmail account.

(1.) Whenever anyone leaves a comment at any of my Blogger blogs, I get an email alerting me to the comment. The alert contains the name of the blog, the name of the commenter, the comment, and...get this...a direct link to that post at which the person left the comment.

(2.) So if the comment is filthy malicious comment spam [which often leads readers to porno sites, con artist sites, spyware attaching sites, or worse], I can go directly and quickly to that post and delete the comment spam. Stupidly, I didn't realize this before. I wasted so much time hunting and deleting, when I could have easily gone right to the post and deleted the spam.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT AGAINST COMMENTS

One more thing I've heard against enabling readers to comment is that if they want to post web content, they should start their own blog.

Boy, this sounds kind of mean-spirited and selfish. Again, I don't want to insult the pioneer bloggers who have recently or always adopted this line of reasoning. But I speak my mind and I don't care who agrees or disagrees with me.

I tell the truth as I see it.

And I see Non-interactive Blogs as very strange, cold, inhuman, uncaring, cut off from the blogospheric community of lively interaction.

CONCLUSION

If you have some valid reason to NOT allow readers to post comments, at least display a non-harvestable email address (one the spambots can't capture: like "vaspersthegrate [at] yahoo [dot] com"), so readers can still contact you.

You can moderate and delay posting of comments if necessary.

But I insist you must let readers join the conversation.

If you don't want to hear from your audience, why do you blog?

You don't really have a blog, you've got a bulletin board or a conventional dynamic content web site ("dynamic"--meaning constantly updated, new content added continually).

I seriously question any blog by anybody, and I don't care how famous or prestigious the blogger is, who won't allow readers to add their input.

Friday, May 27, 2005

I stumbled upon a site in which I stumbled upon another site that stopped me cold in my tracks. It was the very interesting 49 Media that turned me onto Fancy World and Uta Culemann.

Friends, join me in welcoming Uta and her Fancy World site to the blogosphere.

Uta Culemann is a cartoon artist who is new to the blogosphere and is heroically trying to figure out what's going on and she's "curious about where it leads", as she stated in an email to me.

Well, it leads to fame and fortune, if you're as talented as Uta Culemann.

She states "I started my blog with cartoons because I'm from Germany and a cartoon can work without a lot of sentences. Now I'm learning English and also blogging."

I promised her that if she hooks up with Vaspers the Grate and Blog Core Values, I would steer her in the right direction. And I mean to keep my promise, which I also make to all my fans, flamers, and followers.

here's that Bzzzzz image from Fancy World

You've got to take just a moment and look at her latest post, which I cannot give you the deep link URL for, because I cannot count how many "z" are in it. (Sort of reminds me of how some, like the Wall Street Journal, say, correctly but suspiciously, "we cannot really count the blogs in the blogosphere accurately". Ha!)

I copy and paste her post title here:

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

This recent post is captioned "Too much web today" and it cleverly and artistically conveys the overwhelming frustration that we've all experienced at times.

Sometimes, after 22 hours on the computer, I get up and feel like I smoked some sinsimilla mixed with lamb's breath or something. Your brain circuits blow out in a pseudo-euphoric, depersonalizing, disorienting manner.

If I don't get a bunch of comments on this post about Fancy World, I'll know you all have lost a few marbles. Seriously, check this out. It's funny, weird, and well done.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Today's (May 26, 2005 Thursday) online version of The Wall Street Journal has an article, in the section called The Numbers Guy by Carl Bialik, entitled "Measuring the Impact of Blogs Requires More Than Counting":

"If you read press coverage about blogs, you might conclude that just about all Americans are reading a blog".

[STREIGHT: What is he talking about? What "press coverage" declares that almost all Americans are reading blogs? I've never heard any media say this, not even bloggers. Carl cites no reference sources for this bizarre and reckless statement.]

"But then you wouldn't have time to read the press coverage, because if surveys are to be believed, you're probably busy creating your own blog."

[STREIGHT: What surveys? Again, he is making wild accusations without any credibility on his part. What surveys, what press coverage about blogs actually says "just about all Americans are reading a blog" and thus, have no time to read press coverage? This is shoddy journalism, a la MSM.]

BLOG DEFINITION

Paragraph 3 muddies the waters even more:

"Adding to the confusion: disagreement over exactly what a blog is. In our young era of blogging, there's still no consensus. 'Blog' derives from 'Web log' and everyone agrees that a blog should be regularly updated, with new entries in reverse chronological order--and that the entries can be about anything."

[STREIGHT: More reckless journalistic error--"everyone agrees".

I know quite a few who do NOT agree. There are some bloggers who dislike the reverse chronological order of blog entries, want new posts to reside in a conceptual hierarchy, and wish to see thumbnail-like displays of posts so the reader can determine which posts are priority reading.

Carl admits that there seems to be no "consensus" definition of blog, yet he doesn't take the time to fully explain what a blog is. Saying "blog" derives from "Web log" is no explanation at all. I can imagine many readers of this article scratching their heads and thinking "...but, again, what exactly is a blog?"

Steve Streight Definition of Blog: a communications, connectivity, and interactivity platform that enables users with no HTML skills to quickly and easily publish web content for a global audience, thus the democratization of web content publishing, the revolutionary rise of universal access to internet content.]

Doc Searls apparently said that a blog is an "email to the world", which I think is one of best general statements ever made about blogs. It's as easy to post material to a blog as it is to compose and send an email.]

The rest of the article discusses the problem of tracking and counting blogs, and how as many as 50% of blogs are abandoned or blank.

This article sheds very little light on the subject of blogs. No mention of the significance of reader interaction via comments and email to the blog authors. No mention of the community building or activist aspects of blogs.

What is said about the problems of defining, tracking, qualifying, and counting blogs is not new, nor is it very enlightening.

It seems to me that the whole point of this article is to downplay the significance of blogs AS AN ADVERTISING MEDIUM.

Good.

I hate advertising on blogs, and will not allow any ads to appear on any of my blogs.

I also hate blogs that are trying to sell me something, unless it's an occasional book or blog related merchandise like a hat or tee shirt with the blogger's name and logo printed on them. Fun and relevant informative stuff is okay, as long as the promotions on the blog are not pushy, hard-sell, distracting hype.

BLOG IMPACT

Under the subhead "How Important Are They?", Carl states:

"Even if millions of Americans read blogs, there are very few individual blogs that have a significant number of readers."

Again, it's the old fashioned mass media broadcast mentality.

What's important to the dead MSM is numbers of "eyeballs". Bah!

Though it's difficult to measure influence, many blogs seem to have pretty powerful influence on influential thought and action leaders.

This article is careful not to make a very big deal about how bloggers have joined together to topple big names in both journalism and politics. The subversive aspects of blogs are ignored. The democratization of web content publishing is also ignored.

I think Carl, and other MSM journalists, need to actually read some major blogs by important bloggers like Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Hugh Macleod, Darren Rouse, Joi Ito, John C. Dvorak, Richard Edelman, David Weinberger, Steve Rubel, Buzz Bruggeman, and others who discuss blogs and their impact.

Bloggers do a much better job promoting, questioning, and even harshing blogs than the lazy, lame MSM.

I call this an "experiment". I guess it's probably more an "examination".

What I mean is, let's examine these post titles, and see which are most compelling, which titles sound the most interesting.

Then consider your own post title writing. Can you improve your post titles?

I'll do the hard, time-consuming work of assembling post titles every month. Then you can analyze them, deciding which ones are the best, learning what to do...and what not to do...based on these examples.

Judging ONLY by the post titles, which blogs would you want to visit?

Are there post titles that turn you off, that seem stupid, irrelevant?

Which blogs do you think probably contain, on a consistent basis, reputable and relevant content?

Have fun inspecting these post titles.

Who knows?

Maybe in the evaluation process, you'll discover a new blog to blogroll, visit, blog about, and post comments at!

1. Facilitating A "Conversation" Between Internal Stakeholders: Blogging Guidelines to Consider2. Want to Sustain High Morale in Your Organization? Consider Using an Internal Blog3. Why Do People in Organizations Resist Change?4. Employees Who Feel Good About Themselves Produce Superior Results!5. What To Do When Employee Morale is the Problem

1. The commoditization of the hardware store, and of our future2. Ubuntu Linux, Yellowdog Linux, and Mac OS X, all on one PowerBook?3. Your Daily Art: A great example of leveraging blogging4. Review: Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner5. The Seven Core Values of Innovation

1. Interesting Business Strategy2. Out of Town3. Philosophy of Business: Marx's Theory of Worker Alienation and What That Means for Managers4. The Church Business5. How Can A City Promote Entrepreneurship?

1. Henry Ford goes to Atlantis--and beyond2. beer-guzzling blogger moms feed babies booze!3. great americans in rock & roll--1st in a series4. top 40 radio5. the academy: may we have the envelope please

1. Intellectual Property, Patent Reform and Small Business2. How the Internet Has Changed Small Business Forever3. Marketing Strategy for Skeptics4. Back With a Baby!5. A New Generation of Tech Visionaries

1. Podcasts: How professional should they sound?2. Bloggers as event speakers3. Blogiversary at Diva Marketing4. Affiliate programs: Promote your links5. Carnival of the Vanities at Commonwealth Conservative

1. Review: Secrets of Writing for the Internet2. Knock Me Down With a Feather3. Writing for the Web #1--A Guide4. Monday Copywriting Tip #42: How Much Do You Earn?5. Agora Publishing: New date for Agora Model Seminar

1. Hey look, it's That Guy!2. If you wear a nametag all the time, this shouldn't happen3. The Gallery of Annoying Email Signatures4. Once Again, Guinness Book Rejected My Submission for a World Record5. How to Transform Your Car Into a Networking Tool

1. Chiba, Japan Web Conference: Find Out What Happened2. Come See Me Speak in Denver, June 93. Web Copywriting: New Free Guide4. What's a Blog? Bag the Stereotypes5. What Bloggers and Journalists Can Learn from Each Other (Part 4)